Pól Ó Lorcáin
Paul Larkin

Chroniclers are privileged to enter where they
list, to come and go through keyholes, to ride
upon the wind, to overcome in their soarings up
and down, all obstacles of distance, time and
place.
Charles Dickens - Barnaby Rudge,
Chapter The Ninth

Statement from the Hope Not Hate organisation regarding the strikes in England

Comrades, friends, I received a press statement today from "Hope Not Hate" regarding the "British Jobs For British Workers" strikes that are happening in England, Scotland and Wales at the moment

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SEARCHLIGHT/HOPE NOT HATE STATEMENT

Dear comrades,

You are probably aware that there are strikes in the UK calling for “British jobs for British workers”. Though the slogan is totally reactionary and backward whether used by prime minister Gordon Brown, the National Front from whom it originated or from misguided workers, the issue is far from simple because of underlying matters like the UK’s vicious anti-trade union laws which restrict organising, the way in which the UK labour market is almost completely de-regulated...
... and the way in which big construction firms – both UK and multinational – maximise profits by unscrupulously shattering national agreements and ruthlessly paying migrant short-term contract workers wages below those negotiated by British trade unions.

The BNP nazis are trying to climb on the bandwagon of these spontaneous strikes. Anti-fascists, led by Searchlight, are trying to stop them from doing so.

The BNP is trying to exploit the protests in Lincolnshire for its own racist ends by turning an issue about contracts and jobs into a racist one.

Everyone should be alert to the dangers of this protest spiralling out of control, as the BNP would wish, setting worker against worker rather than tightening employment rules to ensure that employers cannot use one group of workers to undercut another – of whichever nationality or race they may be from.

It is also vital that people are not fooled by fascist propaganda. Their policies would crash the British economy. Millions of Britons depend on foreign-owned firms for their jobs. If the BNP got their way and all non-whites and foreigners were booted out of the country then why wouldn’t all these foreign-owned companies pull out as well?

Despite the announcement of 2,500 job cuts this week, the steel company Corus still employs 24,500 people in Britain. When the BNP kick its Indian management out of the country they would be throwing these people onto the scrapheap.

Then there are the hundreds of thousands of British workers who rely on British companies winning overseas contracts. If it’s “British jobs for British workers” then will the BNP support the American aviation industry withdrawing all work from British Aerospace and Rolls Royce and giving it to American companies?

And finally, what about the millions of Britons living and working abroad? If the BNP kicked out everyone in Britain whom they did not like, why wouldn’t other countries do the same?

We live in a complex and interwined global economy. As we have so graphically seen during the recent financial collapse, what happens in one country quickly affects another.

What we need is for workers to enjoy the same rights and conditions across Europe and for people to be paid the rate for the job in the country they are working in.

This, together with proper trade union organisation of all workers – British and “foreign” – and not racial scapegoating is how we stop exploitation of workers and undercutting of wages. The BNP is no friend of the British worker.

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